It was no more than nine o’clock. I had spent the night at the hospital at Torre de Moncorvo; I had been keeping a colleague of mine company as he was alone on night duty on his first day at work.
 
I let the car glide slowly to the stone stairs that indicated the local hospital, as I had been told. I parked the car and I got out. “Good morning, Doctor”, said a sixty-year-old man, who was walking on the other side of the street, taking his hat off to me.
 
I put on my jacket and went up those stairs. “Good morning, Doctor”, said two smiling ladies together who were going down.
 
There was no security guard. I greeted a patient that was at the door. She replied and told me to come in and that the nurse was in an office a nearby.
 
I stopped. It was unbelievable! I had never been in Freixo-de-Espada-à-Cinta. Ever since I was a kid, I had got used to the idea that land was near the end of the world — very far, next to the Spanish border, far from the urban world I had always lived in. I had only been at Vila Real once or twice, and I had never gone beyond it. Trás-os-Montes was something I knew only through literature.
 
In spite of this, people talked to me as if they knew me, as if they esteemed me, as if they liked me.
I stayed in Freixo only four days, the time required to get a working license. The professional and family affairs that I had already assumed didn’t allow me to continue with my career.
 
But I keep a pleasant memory of that land and those people that welcomed me so warmly.
There was no resident doctor. Therefore the day of the young doctor’s arrival — two, at that time — was awaited, by the local population with respect and, probably, some anxiety. It was common for these doctors, soon after their arrival, to find a bureaucratic solution not to stay there, as happened with me.
 
So it was understandable for them to treat us so kindly. And those who stayed there always talked about the difficulty of loading their cars with olive oil, cabbages, potatoes, fruits, and a lot of other wonderful natural products that those people used to give them when they left, once every two weeks, to visit their families.
 
That was a way of compensating for the difficulties in the practice of medicine — without great experience, with very little equipment and sometimes even having to ride a donkey, up-hill, to see a patient who couldn’t move.
 
It was, of course, forbidden to practise outside the hospital. It’s true that they had never ridden a donkey before. But when someone’s life was in danger, they paid no attention to rules or means of transport. They just needed to take care of the situation.
 
There I learned again that people from the interior can be – and many times are – more delicate, easier to deal with, and more sensitive than those who live in big cities.
 
But I was reminded again as well that it must be difficult for politicians, in Lisbon, who define the health rules of this country — and are normally no experts in this area —, to understand these people’s needs, to find appropriate solutions and to define guide lines, to please not only Lisbon, Oporto, Braga and Setúbal, but also Ardãos, Alcains, Calheta and Freixo-de-Espada-à-Cinta.
 
 

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